Thirty Days of Fic: Day 3

[sumeria]

01) Something from your very first fandom
02) Something from your current favorite fandom
03) Your all-time favorite fic

Hoh. This one is tricky in the good way-- specifically, in that I have a very hard time picking just one. Probably my answer to this would be "Drop Dead Gorgeous", a piece of Harry Potter fic that you will notice I have not linked to. This is because its author removed it from the internet when she became a Real Published Author. But it was awesome.

So, since I can't use that, I shall Refuse to Decide, and give you my top four. Hilariously, though about seventy percent of what I read is slash, here we have three het fics and one slash. Ah well.


First, there is A Forfeit of Dreams, which is Labyrinth fic by KL Morgan. This is the fic that drives me back into the Labyrinth fandom over and over again. Fic in this fandom is hard to do; Sarah in the movie is kind of extremely shallow, and, from the perspective of someone like me who saw the movie for the first time when I was twenty, hard to sympathize with. At the same time, Jareth is kind of an abusive controlling asshole. (Being a nonhuman critter such as he is cuts one a bit of slack with that kind of thing, for me, because I'm judging by a different standard, but still "Let me rule you" is not necessarily a sentiment easy to reconcile with a non-creepy romance.) So fic which makes a relationship between them both sweet and intense, while keeping both of them in character and allowing you to see what in the world they see in each other is a rare and precious thing, and this is the finest example I have ever encountered. And I have actually managed to badger some of my non-fic reading friends into giving it a try, I feel that strongly about it.

Secondly, there are about five fics in the Doctor Who fandom that rotate in and out of my top spot, but the one that is on top most often is Rallalon's Non-Linear Love Story. I thought about saving this for the time-travel rec later on, but honestly, what with Who and Torchwood, I feel sure I'll find something else for that. And this fic is just amazing. Firstly, it does the only use of time loops that has ever worked for me. (Moffat, I am looking at you.) Also, I perhaps have a giant weakness for fics wherein Rose becomes involved with pre-Nine versions of the Doctor. Thirdly, the writing here is just basically flawless. We get three of the Doctor over the course of this story (Eight, Nine and Ten) and I am more impressed than I can really say at the way the author manages to distinguish their voices so that all of them sound like the Doctor, but none sounds like each other. But yes, this fic is Practically Perfect in Every Way, and if you by some chance have not read it, I encourage you to do so in the strongest possible terms.

Thirdly, and here is our slash entry for the day, The Sky Trilogy by Starandrea. No longer a trilogy, really, but that's still what the series is listed as on AO3, so that is what I shall go with. I believe this is the first Supernatural fic I ever read, and it is entirely excellent. The writing is a bit stream-of-consciousness, and not as tight as I usually like, but the interesting thing here is that I never notice or mind while I'm reading it. (Which I do often, because I read very quickly, and like to re-read things, and as a consequence of which, I have read pretty much every fic on this list More Often Than I Should Admit To.) The character voices are all spot-on like woah, and if I had control over what was going down on the show, this is *exactly* what it would be. The world building is excellent, the character interactions are perfect, and this author is capable of making me ship Gabriel/Sam as a secondary pairing, which, let the record show, is not easy to do as I find that pairing wildly unlikely and aesthetically displeasing as a general rule. Also, manages to be both dramatic and fun, which I think is not highly-enough valued.

Finally, Jaquemart (which can be found linked from the bottom of that page) is a piece of Utena fanfic from Back in the Day. If you've never seen Revolutionary Girl Utena, and have any tolerance whatsoever for anime, go watch it immediately. Jaquemart is not finished, and probably never shall be, and I regard that as a great tragedy. If I could pick one WIP on the internet to magically gain the rest of, this would be it without question. I hesitated a while about including this one in this list, for a variety of reasons, but in the end I had to. This is the fic that persuaded my college roommate, a woman who takes narrative and literary integrity seriously in a way I have no ability to convey, that fanfic was a legitimate and valuable exercise. (She had previously had nothing printable to say on the subject.) It is also the fic that caused me to remark in startlement to the room at large when first I read it, "...the spanish inquisition just showed up," which I think we can all agree is reason enough to like it. But more to the point, Utena is possibly the greatest work of (visual) art I have ever seen, and this fic captures and expands upon it perfectly.


Deathmatch Totals:

Star Trek	1
The Vampire Diaries	1
Labyrinth	1
Doctor Who	1
Supernatural	1
Revolutionary Girl Utena	1